


i broke the world for us

by freckledshoulderblades



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, caleb is turning back time, endgame villain au? i guess?, fjord accepted the deal with uk'otoa, link in the notes, this is modeled after some solid a+ amazing fanart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 09:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16385471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freckledshoulderblades/pseuds/freckledshoulderblades
Summary: fjord/caleb au where the rest of the nein died and so did caleb's morals lmaoinspired byalexdoodle's art on tumblr!you can find the wip that inspired ithere!





	i broke the world for us

When the group of adventurers nears their end, Fjord steps forth and raises an arm, eyes glowing yellow in the dim light of the ruins. A pillar of water rises with the motion, several more following, as the roof to the underwater temple caves in from the pressure of the sea above, revealing the ocean itself in all its terrible glory. Five of them enter: two short in stature, the remaining fairly average, all armed to the teeth.

Fjord glances over his shoulder, takes in the arcane motes swirling around Caleb’s form, and speaks. “Time’s up, Mister Caleb.”

Caleb closes his eyes in pain. “Please do not call me that,  _ liebling _ .”

One of the adventurers has stepped forth - a copper dragonborn, bow slung over their shoulder and short sword drawn. “Captain. Please, stop this. We don’t want to kill you.”

Another, an elven woman, scoffs. “I sure do.”

The small group dissolves into bickering for a moment, and Fjord takes in the scene. Caleb isn’t finished with the ritual, not yet - there’s at least a few minutes left of incantations needed to open the portal. The ocean above is the easiest way to finish them off, but -

The way the group speaks, with strange confidence and hardy resolve -

Something aches deep in his chest, something he hasn’t felt in years. He  _ misses _ them, more than he can truly describe.

Something sharp pierces his armor, then, and he comes to the present as the dragonborn lowers their bow from the shot. They look pained, but he can’t place why exactly. One of the smaller ones - a dwarf? - raises a staff, and familiar adrenaline surges through him as Fjord clenches a fist.

One of the columns severs itself from base and crest, condensing into a tight, spinning sphere of water, and he hurls it at the group. Two of them manage to leap out of the way - the haughty elven woman and a darkly dressed human = but the rest are caught for a moment in the fabricated current of the sphere. Caleb grunts from behind Fjord, calling out, “I need just a moment more! Hold them off, Fjord!”

Fjord tamps down the ache creeping into his throat, constricting his breath, and nods in response, drawing Summer’s Dance with his free hand as the woman nears him with a snarl.

“ _You_ _killed my friends!_ ” She screams, swinging at him with a warhammer. Fjord dodges the blow nimbly, eldritch energy crackling along the length of Summer’s Dance as he lashes out in turn. He misses, but only just so, and the energy licks along her side for just a moment - enough for her to pale and take a step back out of fear.

There’s a step behind him, too close to Caleb for comfort, and Fjord lunges towards the human attempting to sneak towards his friend, his  _ partner _ , his  _ Caleb _ -

The full force of a column of water slams down on the man, the sphere across the room dissipating, and Caleb looks up at him with determined eyes.

“Fjord,  _ liebling _ -” he manages, hands dancing over the Beacon, nearly freezing in place at the arrow that bounces off of his protective field. Fjord whips around, striding forward with his hand outstretched at the dragonborn that still gasps for breath as they attempt to loose another arrow from their prone position.

“Leave us the  _ hell _ alone.” He growls lowly, body shimmering with a faint pulse of eldritch magic as he drops the full force of the ocean onto the adventuring party.

Caleb continues, unaffected, the sphere of arcane energy preventing the intrusion of water, but locks eyes with Fjord in a meaningful manner. They’d discussed this, previously, as they planned for this exact scenario. Fjord only has a manner of minutes to finish this up before Caleb would begin to suffocate.

Looking forward, at the adventurers reaching for their newly sprouted gills, Fjord readies Summer’s Dance and calls on Uk’otoa once more, currents beginning to whirl wildly around the shattered temple. Broken boulder-size pieces of ceiling move with the currents and Fjord glides easily through the ocean - another reward from his patron. The adventurers begin to converge on him, blades and staves drawn, and there’s a dulled ripping noise from somewhere behind Fjord, a noise he’d only heard once before with Uk’otoa’s return to their world.

‘We’re ready,  _ liebling _ .’ Caleb’s voice rings in his mind, and Fjord can easily conjure up a wall of water that prevents the group from advancing towards them, towards their journey’s end.

There’s a tear in the world itself, large and ragged and emanating a piercing light that threatens to blind Fjord as he advances on the sphere Caleb had created. He steps through, shaking off the weight of the ocean behind him, and takes Caleb’s offered hand.

“Are you ready?” he whispers.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready, darlin’ _. _ ”

They step through the tear and everything goes white.

 

Caleb visits his parents, first. They’re understandably concerned for their son - he’s so much older than he was when he left that morning, to them. Twenty years older, twenty years sadder, and hand in hand with a fearsome half orc man from whom ocean water is dripping and freezing on.

They’re kind. They invite him for tea. Una worries over her boy, so confused about the scars, the haunted look in his eyes. Leofric does the fatherly thing and interrogates Fjord about his intentions for their son, even as he wraps Fjord up in a threadbare blanket.

Caleb winces, at one point, and locks eyes with Fjord. He stands, hands them a bag the size of his mother’s head, brimming with coin. Tells them to run from the Empire.

Fjord takes his hand again and steps back through the tear - the tear that’s steadily widened to the height of the house they’d visited in the distance.

 

They don’t watch Fjord’s beginnings - the sabotage and subsequent sinking of the ship he’d worked on - Fjord had secured his revenge long ago with the release of his patron.

Instead, they visit an old friend.

 

Molly’s just as they remember him - wickedly clever, devilish grins, and part of the ache low in Fjord’s chest subsides, if only for a moment.

It’s days before his death, though he doesn’t know it. Days before Fjord and Jester and Yasha are captured, days before the Nein are broken in ways they never thought possible.

Part of them thought they were invincible, in those days.

They’d stolen Molly away with clever disguises, a man and a woman, and revealed themselves with the closing of the room’s door. There’s confusion, and hesitation, but Caleb explains everything in a terribly quick manner.

“You doomed the world to come and see me?” Molly’s scared and his attempts to hide it under bravado aren’t working. “I’m incredibly flattered, Mister Caleb, Mister Fjord.”

Caleb scoffs, folding his arms in such a way that it nearly looks as though he has muscle. “Not just you, Mollymauk. My parents. Yasha, Beau. Nott and Jester and Caduceus.”

Molly quirks his head at that. “Huh. Was I first?” he asks, as a sort of acceptance dawns on him.

Fjord nods for the both of them. Caleb has to look away.

“How long...is it?”

Fjord clears his throat. “Don’t think we should say.”

Molly laughs, but it sounds a little too forced. “There’s a reason you visited today, not some other time.”

Caleb stands, abruptly, and draws the lavender tiefling into a tight hug. “Stay vigilant, circus man.”

Molly’s face is drawn tight as they leave, Fjord holding him tight for just a moment to ease his own ache. “Just...don’t use it. When the time comes. Yasha needs you, we all did.”

 

The rest of the Nein understand, surprisingly. Yasha and Beau had died minutes apart, after all - the Hydra they’d fought against having fallen only moments after they did.

Nott is harder, her own end having come so abruptly - a trap she’d failed to disarm disarming her in turn. With Jester gone that day, and Caduceus completely tapped, she’d passed in Caleb’s arms.

He’d closed everyone off after that, only really opening up after his own plans were solidified and his resolve hardened.

Jester, her own haste during battle costing her too much. Caduceus had simply left after the return of Uk’otoa and the reveal of Fjord and Caleb’s plans. He’s the easiest to visit, after all, so close to their true time.

 

“I don’t have enough cups.” he says, but the look of utter disdain is anything but a repeat of their first encounter. Caduceus tries to shut the door on them, but Caleb merely waves a hand and it slams open, hinges squeaking in protest. Fjord bows his head in apology, even as he enters the firbolg’s home.

“What are you doing here? I thought you might be at the bottom of the Lucidian, enacting your plan.” Caduceus says, turning to rifle through his cabinets.

Caleb laughs, something short and pained. “Why do you think we are here, Caduceus Clay?”

Caduceus pauses as he pulls out a cup, setting it lightly on the counter with a heavy sigh. His ears droop and his shoulders rise in annoyance, exacerbated by the way he haphazardly pours tea into his cup.

He takes a sip, then a longer one, before reaching into another cabinet and pulling out a familiar looking bottle.

“Thought you didn’t drink?” Fjord offers teasingly.

Caduceus huffs. “Now’s a good time to start, isn’t it?” he says, gesturing out the window. The crest of the various burial mounds outside just barely cover the tear itself, growing near exponentially with every passing minute.

He takes a long draft from the bottle, face screwing up in disgust at the taste, and passes it to Caleb, who takes it with raised eyebrows.

“So generous.” he remarks, and Caduceus sighs again.

“Might as well, with the end of the world approaching.”

They drink in companionable silence for a time, simply watching the tear expand, when Caduceus speaks.

“Those adventurers, did they ever make it?”

Caleb hums in response.

“You sent them our way?” Fjord prompts, bringing the half empty bottle to his lips. Caduceus winces a little.

“Yeah. The elven woman, Tenny? You killed her parents, I think. She said you killed her whole village, actually.” He fixes a hard stare on Caleb. “I felt like I didn’t have much choice then. I trusted the two of you for a long time, and you went and did….this.” Caduceus gestures out the window at the tear, nearly doubled in size from their arrival.

“It needed blood,” Fjord supplies unhelpfully. Caduceus drops his head to his hands.

“I’m so tired of this.” he whispers, and as Caleb grimaces he holds out a hand to Fjord to take, pulling him to his feet and out to the cemetery.

 

The tear takes them to a beach, empty of inhabitants with the tear itself spanning near the entire sky in its enormity - light pouring out and bathing Fjord and Caleb in a soft glow as they walk the length of the sand.

“Do you remember the first time we went to a beach together,  _ liebling _ ?” Caleb asks from Fjord’s side, voice tight and pained.

Fjord laughs. “Course I do. You were naked.”

When Caleb laughs in turn, his cheeks redden. “Yes, of course.” He takes a step, then another, before he sucks in a sharp breath and falls to his knees. The tear rips open further above them, the light almost impossibly bright.

“Darlin’ -”

“No,  _ liebling _ , let me talk.” Fjord kneels next to him, a hand in Caleb’s hair as he speaks, slow and haggard. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry this has worked out this way. But I cannot imagine the world without you. I can’t imagine any world without you.”

Caleb grips Fjord’s arm uncomfortably tight, and Fjord’s grip falls to his partner’s forearm. “And for that you needed to be stronger. You needed your patron. And I needed to get stronger as well.”

“I broke the world for us.” He says, and Fjord can feel the fervor in his tone, the broken determination in his eyes. “ _ I broke the world for you _ .”

The tear shudders and splits the sky one last time, light spilling forth into the ocean, into the sea, swelling until Fjord can only see Caleb as he leans in to press a kiss to his lips.

“ _ I broke the world to see them again. _ ”

**Author's Note:**

> listen this may not be the best but i also wrote this in an hour tops and that wip gave me feelings  
> imagine how amazing it'll be when it's finished???? heck my dudes  
> comments are appreciated and inspire me to write more stuff! <3


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